Autumn's Fortune

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  After Tim had hosed out the blood from the barn, he and Robyn both went and washed up for dinner. They had been working hard all day, so neither of them noticed that the temperature hadn’t changed much all day, and the only place the frost had melted was where the sun’s rays could reach.

  Sitting out on the porch after he’d changed, he still saw that under the trees and where the sun never hit that day was still covered in the frosty rime.

  Yeah, Timmy boy, it’s going to be a long, cold winter up here methinks…

  They had instant mash potatoes and canned creamed corn with their steaks that night, and after supper, Tim lit a roaring fire in the huge fireplace in the living room. Robyn was curled up on a huge reclining chair with a cup of hot cocoa and Tim was sipping some 12 year old scotch over ice, his feet up on the coffee table.

  “I could get used to this,” Robyn said.

  “Yeah, so can I.” he replied, “At least here we’re so far off of the beaten path even if travelers came over the Interstate and stopped into town, they’d never find us.”

  “Are we ever going to try to find more people?”

  “Don’t go talking about that radio station in Taos again. Not until spring.”

  “I wasn’t, although I do think it’s odd. What I’m saying is this; if you did catch that lady, and she didn’t try to cut your head off with the machete---.”

  “And she wasn’t batshit crazy,” Tim finished for her.

  “And she wasn’t batshit crazy, would you have brought her along with us?”

  “That’s a hard question, Pumpkin. There’s no telling. I do know she was way too far gone for reasoning. The last two years of solitude drove her mental.”

  “I keep remembering how her place looked, no different than that trailer me and my mom had back in West Virginia. Geoffrey had died in that abandoned well, and I was all alone.”

  “And you’re thinking that you might have gone nuts too?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, if you hadn’t have come along that day, who knows how I’d be now.”

  “No use contemplating that, Baby. You’re safe now.”

  Robyn was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You know, there’s got to be other people out there, right?”

  “Yes, there’s got to be more. We’ve seen the evidence, only you and I haven’t had the best luck in the types of people we find.”

  “Dawn Redeagle was pretty cool,” she pointed out.

  “He’s about the only one. The rest, well…”

  “Yeah, I know. I think sometimes maybe it’d be nice---.”

  “To have someone else closer to your age,” Tim agreed, “I understand.”

  “Well, that too. I was thinking more along the lines of someone for you, so, well, you know…” she trailed off, turning red and becoming embarrassed.

  Tim smiled slightly and said “So you’d have a mom and maybe some brothers and sisters?”

  “Don’t laugh!”

  “I’m not, Honey. It’s a sweet notion, and I thank you for thinking of me like that.”

  “Okay. I still want to go to Taos though!”

  “Not until the spring, I said. Not get going and get to bed. I’ll be up shortly.”

  “Alright,” she said, got up and kissed him good night on the top of his head, and climbed the stairs slowly. As soon as she was out of sight, he lit another cigarette and jingled the ice around in his tumbler. He decided against another drink, but sat there and stared at the fire for a long time, deep in thought.

  It had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman, and that chestnut haired beauty from high school came flooding back to the forefront. Maybe I should have married her, he thought. Even if he did; he’s still be in the same situation, alone with a 14 year old kid.

  He stood, went to the fireplace and with a poker, banked the coals, flicked his butt into the dying embers and went up to bed, where he was soon fast asleep, and in his dreams he was back at the pavilion on that summer day in Pennypack Park. It was a very good dream.

  The next day it had warmed up a bit from the preceding days, and the sun felt good and they drove west on I-40 towards the next town west, Ash Fork, where the brochure Robyn had found said there were plenty of places along state route 89 and south towards Chino Valley to cut the Shaggy Bark Juniper.

  Tim soon found that the juniper trees were rough on the chainsaw blade, and he had to stop several times to sharpen the blades. By close to dusk, they’d only filled a third of the 10’ trailer Tim had pinched from the local U-Haul place.

  They were both tired and covered in sawdust from the chainsaw. As they wearily climbed into the Hum-Vee for the drive home, Robyn sat up, startled, and yelled out, “Dad! Over there!”

  “What is it?” he asked, reaching for his carbine. Robyn put a hand on his, motioning him to leave the rifle, and got out of the vehicle. Slowly she made her way across the highway to the far side, and then crouched down. She motioned Tim to come over, putting a finger to her lips in a Shhhhh! Gesture.

  AS he got to where she was squatting, he whispered, “What is it?”

  “I dunno. There! Right there!” she pointed.

  Tim squinted and then saw what she was looking at, “Well I’ll be dipped in dogshit.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Robyn asked.

  “Yeah, that’s a kangaroo, alright.” Tim said and then slowly stood. The large animal turned and looked right at Tim, standing tall to get a better look. It stood almost six feet tall, and Tim remembered the largest ones were Red Kangaroos.

  “Look! There’s more of them!” she said happily, “How’d they get here?”

  “They probably escaped from the Phoenix zoo after The Event. Seems they’ve been out for a while, and bred some. This is perfect habitat for them.”

  “There’s even more!” she squealed, “I see at least 30 of them!”

  Soon, they kangaroos got bored of the two humans invading their space and hopped off through the juniper trees. As Tim and Robyn made their way back to the Hum-Vee, Tim stopped dead in his tracks, worried look now painted across his face.

  Turning to face her, he put both hands on her shoulders and peered into her eyes, “Robyn, sweetheart, you’ve got to promise me one thing,” he said gravely.

  “What is it Dad?”

  “You’ll not go anywhere without being armed, okay? I know I taught you well, and you’re pretty good at it… Only never, ever go anywhere without your rifle, okay?”

  “Sure Dad, whatever you say.”

  “I mean it. Do go anywhere without your M1 of the M4.”

  They got back into the Hum-Vee, and Tim turned around to head back home. As they entered the eastbound lanes from the onramp, Tim noticed huge gates that were open although would easily block off entrance to the highway, and that told him the blizzards there got pretty nasty if they had to close off the highway.

  His mind digressed, and he turned to Robyn, the green lights from the instruments on the dash gave him a demonic look in the growing darkness, “Robyn. The reason I’m so adamant about not going anyplace unarmed was because of those kangaroos.”

  “Dad,” Robyn laughed, “Kangaroos aren’t dangerous.”

  “Well, they can be, only that’s not what I’m talking about. You see, they had to have escaped from the zoo. And there’s other critters in the zoo that might have escaped and bred that aren’t so cute and docile. Like lions and tigers, for example…” he trailed off, letting it sink in.

  “Oh… Oh, yeah, I understand now. Don’t worry, I’ll not go anywhere without my M4,” she reassured him, remembering that winter’s day two years ago in West Virginia and the standoff she had with the rabid coyote.

  After supper that night they both went to bed early, tired from the day’s exertions. The next morning after coffee, they both unloaded their take of firewood and piled in front of the house where it’d get the maximum sun for it to dry.

  “If it won’t dry completely before winter, at least I’ll have
it cut and split. Next spring, we’ll do a bunch more cutting, and that’ll give it time to dry over the summer,” Tim told Robyn.

  “Yep, right after we get back from Taos.”

  “You never give up, do you?”

  “Nope, I come by it from you,” she said, sticking he tongue out at him playfully as she tossed her M4 into the Hum-Vee.

  Tim got behind the wheel and drove off towards Williams. He glanced over at her and said, “I know you want to find out what the scoop is back in Taos, only it can wait until next summer.”

  “Whoever is there, well, they might be gone by then!”

  “Can you still pick them up?”

  “It comes and goes. I need a bigger, taller antenna. The dipole I made and have strung up in my bedroom only works so well. I need a bigger one, outside.”

  “Well, maybe after we finish this chore with the wood, we can take a drive over to Flagstaff and see if we can scare you up a better antenna. How’s that sound?”

  “Well, it’s got to me a good all-around HF, VHF, UHF Shortwave and go from the two meter to six meter band, and omnidirectional,” she told him.

  Tim blinked looked at her, “Now say that again, this time in English.”

  “I’ll need an antenna that will work with all radio frequencies. From what all the manuals are telling me, a vertical half-wave dipole will work the best, although it won’t be optimum.”

  “Optimum? How old are you again?”

  “Fourteen, and you know I’ll be fifteen in December!” she said.

  “Okay, okay, we’ll get you an optimum antenna,” Tim told her, not having a clue what she was talking about.

  “And a 100’ tower would be great, too!” she added.

  “Obviously! It’s as plain as day we’re going to need a 100’ tower!”

  “Dad, please don’t tease me.”

  “Alright, I’m sorry. It’s only that you scare me sometimes how goddamn smart you are.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I love you!” she said and stretched across the wide console that separated the two seats and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “I love you too, Pumpkin. I don’t want to see you go to all this trouble, doing all that work on those radios and everything, and never get anybody to reply.”

  “Well, it’ll keep me out of trouble,” she told him.

  “Oh, you think so, huh?”

  Robyn stuck her tongue out at Tim and replied, “Yeah I do, Sar’ Major!”

  They both drove on to Ash Fork, and then headed south on route 89 and drove for a few miles. Tim found a good spot with some nice sized juniper trees and they both got to work. They stopped for lunch and while Robyn ate some granola mix and drank about a gallon of Gatorade, Tim bandaged up cut fingers from sharpening the chainsaw blade with a file.

  “I’m getting sick of sharpening these blades,” he said in a huff.

  “Why don’t we get a bunch of chainsaws, and when one gets dull, we switch to a fresh chainsaw. Then we can sharpen them back up later?”

  Tim stopped and stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded, “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

  “That’s why I’m around, Sar’ Major.”

  “Besides the blades, the gas is getting shitty. Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to run the gas powered ones anymore.”

  “Then what will we do?” Robyn asked.

  “Well, it depends. There’s electric chainsaws, and if the EMP that came along with The Event didn’t fuck up the electrics, we could bring a small diesel generator with us and a few long extension cords.”

  “If the pulse did fry the electrics, then what?”

  “Then we’re kinda’ fucked. We’d be back to bow saws and axes. Not something I want to be using for a few cords of wood.”

  After lunch, they cut some more wood, then by late afternoon and even if they were both exhausted, they did managed to fill the whole 10’ trailer with cut wood; all that was needed now was to get it home and split it.

  The stowed away all of their tools securely in the rear of the Hum-Vee, and Tim and Robyn headed back north on route 89 towards I-40 and Ash Fork. Tim went to light a cigarette and in the process, dropped his Zippo on the floor between his legs, reaching down to fetch it, he took his eyes off the road for a second…

  “DAD! Watch out!” Robyn screamed.

  Tim looked up in time to see a large kangaroo looming right in the middle of the road, He planted both feet on the brake pedal hard, hoping that the trailer behind didn’t jackknife. Tires screeched on asphalt, and then a sickening thud as they hit the big animal.

  “Shit.” Tim said, as they both got out of the vehicle to see what damage they had done. They had been driving almost 50 miles per hour, and while there was no damage to the robust front end of the Hum-Vee, the same couldn’t be said for the poor kangaroo they’d hit.

  Broken and battered, the large creature looked at them both with blank eyes, and died as they stood over it. Tim felt horrible, and Robyn started to cry. Tim took her in his arms and held her tight, apologizing, “Robyn, I’m sorry. I should’ve been looking where I was driving.”

  “I know, It’s not your fault. I feel so bad. They’re such cool critters.”

  “Well, help me drag it out of the road, okay?”

  “Okay,” Robyn said as they grabbed it by the tail and began dragging it out of the way, “Hey, wait a minute! Look!” she said, pointing to the dead animal.

  Tim looked down, and then could see a nose, then whole face and big ears stick out of the pouch, looking around, wondering what was going on.

  “It’s a Joey,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A Joey, a baby kangaroo; they stay in their mom’s pouch for almost a year. This one looks like it’s almost ready to be free,” Tim told her.

  Robyn bent down and gently pulled the Joey free, and then cuddled the frightened baby to calm it. Soon with her cooing, it stopped kicking and then started to suck on her finger. Robyn, still holding the Joey like a baby, looked up at Tim.

  “No, goddamnit!” Tim said firmly, “We are not taking a baby kangaroo home!”

  “Dad! He’ll die out here alone like this! It’s the lease we can do!”

  “No!”

  “He’s hungry,” Robyn said.

  “Goddamnit!” Tim said again, and then went rummaging around in the Hum-Vee again, and produced a latex glove from the first aid kit. Then he went to the emergency food stash he kept in the vehicle, and taking some water and powdered milk, made a formula. With his teeth, he bit a tiny hole in one of the fingers of the glove, and then filled the glove up with the milk, tying off the wrist end of the glove. Once he was done, he handed it to Roby, who immediately fed the makeshift nipple to the Joey, who started to drink greedily.

  Robyn fed the Joey until it was satisfied, and they small kangaroo clutched onto her denim jacket, almost as if it were hugging her. She grabbed a towel and wrapped the small animal up and cradled him in her arms, looking at Tim and smiling.

  “Oh, alright, but only until he’s big enough to go back to his herd or whatever a group of kangaroos are called!”

  “Sar’ Major, you’re a big softie,” Robyn teased, as they both got back into the Hum-Vee and continued home.

  “What do kangaroos eat?” she asked.

  “Grass and shit like that.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, cuddling the small creature.

  “You know you’re going to be responsible for that thing now.”

  “We’re both responsible, Dad,” Robyn told him, “You’re the one who killed its mother!”

  “Don’t be a smartass!”

  “I wasn’t, I was stating fact,” she told him.

  “Look, I don’t want to start and argument,” Tim said, “Only here’s a fact. Now we have another mouth to feed, and we’ll be hard pressed to find things for him to eat over the winter. It’s not like a dog that could eat table scraps, this little guy or girl has a very specific diet.”

  Tears were we
lling up in her eyes when she said, “Well, we couldn’t let him die!”

  Tim sighed deeply, turning off the off ramp and drove into Williams in the darkness, “I know that too. You’re doing the right thing…”

  “See, even you know I’m right.”

  “Okay, okay. Wipe your eyes. I hate to see you cry. I’ll come into town tomorrow and get some books from the library on Kangaroos. I want to get some on growing vegetables too, so I’ll get a few more books.”

  The next morning, Tim left Robyn at home and headed into town and found the library. Picking the lock on the door, he quickly made his way to the do it yourself aisle, and with the help of a cart, took most of the books they had on everything from home carpentry, plumbing and electrical, to a book titled ‘How to be a rutabaga tycoon in three easy steps!’

  He then went and found several books on kangaroos and wallabies, paging through a few. One passage caught his eye, and now alarmed, he took the books he’d stacked in the entranceway, loaded them into the Hum-Vee and sped home.

  When he got home, he found Robyn sitting on the porch, drinking a can of coke, the small kangaroo nearby, eating the low grass by the porch railing. When the Hum-Vee pulled up, it startled the Joey, and it hopped into Robyn’s arms.

  “Don’t give it anymore milk, okay?” he told her.

  “Why not? And his name is Fred!”

  “Because kangaroos are naturally lactose intolerant, so they can only drink their mother’s milk that has special enzymes or some such shit in it so the kid can eat. If it drinks other milk, it is quite possible it can go blind!”

  “Oh, wow, yeah, okay,” Robyn replied.

  “And Fred, really?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  Tim shrugged in resignation, “Okay then, Fred it is. Now help me with these books.”

  The quickly brought all the books Tim had pinched from the library and had them loaded into an empty bookshelf that stood in the living room adjacent to the fireplace. Tim thought it’d be enough winter reading material, and it should last him until spring.

  When they were done, Tim told her, “I’m going back into town to scrounge for a hydraulic log splitter. There’s bound to be one somewhere.”

  “Why didn’t you do that after you got the books?” Robyn asked.